Jonah Goldberg stories, Page 12

As the Trump administration takes its “law and order” show on the road after a dress rehearsal at Lafayette Square in Washington, D.C., and a soft opening in Portland, Ore., let me just say I’m disgusted with almost everybody involved. Let’s start with the Portland demonstrators. Contrary to heroic PR...

President Trump’s interview with Chris Wallace, which aired on “Fox News Sunday,” was remarkable in more ways than there is room to recount here. But let’s start with what should be the lead story: The president of the United States told Wallace that the mental competence test he recently took...

Roger Stone is an infamously execrable force in American politics. Perhaps his only saving grace is that he’s not a hypocrite about it. Stone is a proud “dirty trickster.” The GOP kept him on a leash lest his amorality be too closely associated with the Republican brand. Part of his...

What would a President Pence do? It’s a question no one is asking, so I guess it falls to me. In January 2020 it was almost as if God, the universe or our Lizard People overlords were giving the Republicans one last chance to separate their fate from Trump’s. The...

In these trying times, it’s difficult to find something to smile about. But I’ve found some modicum of mirth watching very sympathetic liberals go the extra mile to help hone the message of activists calling to “defund the police.” For instance, Katy Tur, an MSNBC anchor, had Isaac Bryan, the...

The first thing to remember about vice presidential picks is that they are marketing decisions. That is, once a candidate has been deemed qualified to be president, the only thing that matters is what the choice says about the person at the top of the ticket. It wasn’t always this...

One of the things I love about America — and there are many — is her deeply ingrained rebelliousness. When the government tells us to do something, we instinctively question it. Of course, all principles can be taken too far. It’s good to question authority, but if a sign says,...

Attorney General William Barr ignited yet another firestorm last week by dismissing all charges against former national security adviser Michael Flynn. Then Barr threw more gas on the fire when Catherine Herridge of CBS asked him, “When history looks back on this decision, how do you think it will be...

One of the problems with politics these days is that it’s increasingly difficult to hold a single line of argument without veering out of that lane and ramming into something else. The pundits and politicians fighting over Tara Reade’s accusations against presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden often careen around...

During the filming of the 1939 movie “Jesse James,” a stuntman and his horse went over a cliff and fell 70 feet into a river. The stuntman was fine; the horse died. This incident is what gave rise to that line at the end of many movies: “No animals were...

Our culture has a wonderful way of taking controversial or partisan figures and weaving them into the broader story of America. When Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, for example, his secretary of war, Edwin Stanton, purportedly said, “Now he belongs to the ages,” which was a way of saying that the...

A reporter asked President Trump last week what he thought of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s claim that impeachment distracted Trump from tackling the coronavirus epidemic earlier. The president gave a rambling answer but ultimately settled on a firm no. “I don’t think I would have done better had I...

On Sunday, President Trump, absent any hard evidence, suggested that large numbers of masks were being stolen from New York hospitals, citing an unnamed facility he said had seen a huge surge in mask usage. “How do you go from 10 to 20 (thousand masks being used), to 300,000?” Trump...

The social and political response to major catastrophes often proceeds in stages. Stage 1 is denial. Thankfully, this stage is largely over for the coronavirus crisis. Not counting a few poltroons and conspiracy theorists, nobody is saying it’s all hype or no big deal. Now we’re transitioning, in fits and...

If there’s one thing worth knowing about China — in terms of geopolitics and American national security at least — it’s that its rulers are almost as afraid of the people as the people are afraid of them. Think about it. Why would a government place secret cameras everywhere? Censor...

Amid all of the well-placed urgency and occasionally misplaced panic of the covid-19 pandemic, many have decided there’s a pressing need to debate whether terms such as “Wuhan virus” or “Chinese coronavirus” are racist. On one side is a broad coalition that includes liberal pundits, Democratic politicians, the World Health...

Now will someone listen? Early voting is stupid. Under California’s new election protocols, as many as 40% of California voters voted early, either by mail or at voting centers, for the March 3 primary. And what about those who cast ballots for Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg, Elizabeth Warren, Mike Bloomberg...

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, the front-runner for the Democratic nomination for president, is praised by his admirers for being consistent. He’s been saying the same things for 40 years, they explain — as if this is an obvious compliment. I think that’s kind of weird. But I also like it...

In “Jaws 2,” Roy Scheider reprises his role as police Chief Brody, the landlubber lawman forced to battle a great white shark. He’s convinced there’s another beast out there, but he can’t persuade anyone who matters. “Look at this. That’s a shark,” says Brody, waving a grainy underwater photo at...

Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who did not have a great performance in Wednesday’s Democratic debate, nevertheless said something interesting. “We’re not going to throw out capitalism,” Bloomberg said. “We tried. Other countries tried that. It was called communism, and it just didn’t work.” I’m unclear on when...

For most of my life the rule of thumb was that the GOP was the ideological party and the Democratic Party was the coalitional party. This always was an overgeneralization. Democrats had an ideological perspective, and Republicans had coalitional interests. But from the New Deal to around the end of...

One of my favorite running jokes on the internet is, “You had one job.” It’s a staple of Twitter and YouTube, with images of signs reading, “Turn Left” with an arrow pointing right, or supermarket shelves demarcating where you can buy “Poop Tarts.” Well, the Iowa Democratic Party rolled out...

As the impeachment trial fizzled out, I’m left wondering if the GOP has lost its mind, because the only other choice is that I have. I’m not referring to the Republican senators’ collective decision not to remove the president from office. I’ve always argued that this was a question reasonable...

Dear Republican senators, I will not try to convince you how to vote in the impeachment trial of President Trump. I won’t even lecture you about the need for witnesses, in part because by the time you see this it will probably be too late. My request is far more...

“I’m with the Bush-Cheney team, and I’m here to stop the count.” Those words were bellowed by John Bolton in a Tallahassee library in December 2000, when he was part of a team of Republican lawyers trying to stop the Florida recount of votes cast in the presidential race between...